Monoculture
tree plantations are not forests
Statement
by forestry professionals and students
Sign
on the statement
See
here the press release
Throughout the world,
governments are actively promoting the expansion of large-scale monoculture
tree plantations, despite the serious social and environmental impacts
already witnessed on existing plantations. The promoters of this model
claim that plantations are forests, which simply is not true. Plantations
are not forests. Unfortunately, many of our colleagues in the forestry
sector support this model, and our teaching institutions continue
to train new generations of forestry professionals to perpetuate and
expand this type of forestry model, aimed at seeing forests where
they do not exist.
This is why we feel
the need to publicly state not only that monoculture tree plantations
are not forests, but also that these plantations result or have resulted
in the destruction of our native forests and of other equally valuable
ecosystems that they replace.
Those who know the
most about this issue are the local populations who directly suffer
the impacts of plantations, such as:
- Loss of biodiversity
(and the resulting loss of food, medicines, firewood, and materials
for housing construction and crafts, among others).
- Changes in the water cycle, resulting both in the decrease and
depletion of water sources and the increase of flooding and landslides.
- Decreased food production.
- Soil degradation.
- Loss of indigenous and traditional cultures that depend on the
original ecosystems.
- Conflicts with forestry companies over the ownership of land in
indigenous territories and those of other traditional communities.
- Decreased sources of employment in traditionally agricultural
areas.
- Expulsion of rural populations.
- Destruction of the natural landscape in tourism areas.
For reasons like
these, we forestry professionals who strive for the conservation of
forests and recognise the basic rights of the peoples who live there
must take the side of those who truly defend the forests – the
local communities – and oppose the expansion of monoculture
plantations.
We want to stress
that this process is not beginning today, but in fact dates back to
the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. At that time, a group
of forestry students and professionals agreed on the need for “another
kind of forestry training based on a different way of seeing the world,
in which forests are not seen simply as wood, but rather as what they
really are: diverse ecosystems made up of forest flora, fauna and
peoples.” In line with this position, we clearly declared ourselves
“against the establishment of large-scale monocultures or homogenous
tree plantations.”
Today, within this
framework, we are calling on forestry students and professionals to
adhere to this declaration and to begin a process, inside and outside
educational institutions, that will make it possible for those of
us who enter this profession to actually do what we thought we would
be doing when we entered it: defending forests and the peoples who
depend on them.
Click
here to download the statement with the signatories up to 06th
October
